Security Policy Leaders OK Pentagon Cuts

Security Policy Leaders OK Pentagon Cuts

by

Carl Conetta

The following is excerpted from a letter on
military spending sent by 46 national security experts to the National
Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, 18 November 2010.

The vitality of our economy is the cornerstone of
our nation's strength. We share the Commission's desire to bring our
financial house into order. Doing so is not merely a question of
economics. Reducing the national debt is also a national security
imperative. To date, the Obama
administration has exempted the Defense Department from any budget reductions.
This is short-sighted: It makes it more difficult to accomplish the task
of restoring our economic strength, which is the underpinning of our military
power.

As the rest of the nation labors to reduce its debt
burden, the current plan is to boost the base DOD budget by 10 percent in real
terms over the next decade. This would come on top of the nearly 52
percent real increase in base military spending since 1998. (When
war costs are included the increase has been much greater: 95
percent.)

Granting defense a special dispensation puts at
risk the entire deficit reduction effort. Defense spending today constitutes
over 55 percent of discretionary spending and 23 percent of the federal
budget. An exemption for defense not only undermines the broader call for
fiscal responsibility, but also makes overall budget restraint much harder as a
practical economic and political matter. We
need not put our economic power at risk in this way. Today the United
States possesses a wide margin of global military superiority. The defense
budget can bear significant reduction without compromising our essential
security.

We recognize that larger military adversaries may
rise to face us in the future. But the best hedge against this possibility
is vigilance and a vibrant economy supporting a military able to adapt to new
challenges as they emerge. We can achieve
greater defense economy today in several ways. We need to be more
realistic in the goals we set for our armed forces and more selective in our
choices regarding their use abroad. We should focus our military on core
security goals and on those current and emerging threats that most directly
affect us.

We also need to be more judicious in our choice of
security instruments when dealing with international challenges. Our armed
forces are a uniquely expensive asset and for some tasks no other instrument
will do. For many challenges, however, the military is not the most
cost-effective choice. We can achieve greater efficiency today without
diminishing our security by better discriminating between vital, desirable, and
unnecessary military missions and capabilities.

There is a variety of specific options that would
produce savings, some of which we describe below. The important point,
however, is a firm commitment to seek savings through a reassessment of our
defense strategy, our global posture, and our means of producing and managing
military power.

Since the end of the Cold War, we have required
our military to prepare for and conduct more types of missions in more places
around the world. The Pentagon's task list now includes not only
preventive war, regime change, and nation building, but also vague efforts to
"shape the strategic environment" and stem the emergence of threats. It is
time to prune some of these missions and restore an emphasis on defense and
deterrence.

U.S. combat power dramatically exceeds that of
any plausible combination of conventional adversaries. To cite just one
example, Secretary Gates has observed that the U.S. Navy is today as capable as
the next 13 navies combined, most of which are operated by our allies. We
can safely save by trimming our current margin of superiority.

America's permanent peacetime military presence
abroad is largely a legacy of the Cold War. It can be reduced without
undermining the essential security of the United States or its
allies.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have revealed
the limits of military power. Avoiding these types of operation globally
would allow us to roll back the recent increase in the size of our Army and
Marine Corps.

The Pentagon's acquisition process has repeatedly
failed, routinely delivering weapons and equipment late, over cost, and less
capable than promised. Some of the most expensive systems correspond to
threats that are least prominent today and unlikely to regain prominence
soon. In these cases, savings can be safely realized by cancelling,
delaying, or reducing procurement or by seeking less costly alternatives.

Recent efforts to reform Defense Department
financial management and acquisition practices must be strengthened. And
we must impose budget discipline to trim service redundancies and streamline
command, support systems, and infrastructure.

Change along these lines is bound to be
controversial. However, fiscal realities call on us to strike a new
balance between investing in military power and attending to the fundamentals of
national strength on which our true power rests. We can achieve safe
savings in defense if we are willing to rethink how we produce military power
and how, why, and where we put it to use.

**************************

The 46 signatories include a Nobel laureate, former
Assistant Secretaries of Defense and Commerce, former heads of the Congressional
Budget Office National Security Division and the National Security and
International Affairs section of the White House Office of Management and the
Budget. Also among the signatories are former members of the National
Security Council, National Intelligence Council, and National Defense Panel.
Twenty-two of the signatories are members of the Council on Foreign
Relations. Several of the signatories are former military officers of
colonel rank or above, including a former president of the National Defense
University.

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